La Passeuse (2024, Arts grant of the Generalitat)
The project investigates the figure of the passeuse i.e. the person, deity or animal who accompanies somebody to another physical or ontological place; the one without whose assistance passing is not possible. Although the passeuse is an omnipresent figure in the arts and in human history, her presence is rarely recognized, because s/he is never the protagonist and because the various guises in which s/he appears have not been considered as a whole (a notable exception is Carmignani, Figures du passeur).
Typically, in art history and classical literature, the passeuse is to be found among the psychopomps from Charon to Hermes, through Anubis or the Etruscan goddess Vanth. However, all sorts of animals are also passeuses, mostly in the sea (e.g. dolphin, for example in saving Arion) but also in the air (birds, for example Leucothea saving Ulysses, or the golden ram in the myth of Phrixus and Helle). The word/concept is used in Lacanian psychoanalysis, immigration and cultural studies. In the wide understanding I use, sometimes passeuse and passenger are merged, as in transgender transition (e.g. in Fassbender’s movie In A Year of Thirteen Moons) or ‘race’ transition (eg. Larsen’s novel Passing). An excellent illustration of the broader notion of the figure is Stalker from Tarkovsky’s homonymous film.
My work revolves around five compelling features of the passeur: ontological change; neutrality and self-effacement; clandestinity (the secret, risk); space of transience (liminality); Kairos, the opportune time. Visually, these translate into certain movements or gestures, like carrying, falling, hiding, withdrawing, ceding priority.
I have organised several public events around this project in the Fusteria and the UB.
La Passeuse (2024, Arts grant of the Generalitat)
The project investigates the figure of the passeuse i.e. the person, deity or animal who accompanies somebody to another physical or ontological place; the one without whose assistance passing is not possible. Although the passeuse is an omnipresent figure in the arts and in human history, her presence is rarely recognized, because s/he is never the protagonist and because the various guises in which s/he appears have not been considered as a whole (a notable exception is Carmignani, Figures du passeur).
Typically, in art history and classical literature, the passeuse is to be found among the psychopomps from Charon to Hermes, through Anubis or the Etruscan goddess Vanth. However, all sorts of animals are also passeuses, mostly in the sea (e.g. dolphin, for example in saving Arion) but also in the air (birds, for example Leucothea saving Ulysses, or the golden ram in the myth of Phrixus and Helle). The word/concept is used in Lacanian psychoanalysis, immigration and cultural studies. In the wide understanding I use, sometimes passeuse and passenger are merged, as in transgender transition (e.g. in Fassbender’s movie In A Year of Thirteen Moons) or ‘race’ transition (eg. Larsen’s novel Passing). An excellent illustration of the broader notion of the figure is Stalker from Tarkovsky’s homonymous film.
My work revolves around five compelling features of the passeur: ontological change; neutrality and self-effacement; clandestinity (the secret, risk); space of transience (liminality); Kairos, the opportune time. Visually, these translate into certain movements or gestures, like carrying, falling, hiding, withdrawing, ceding priority.
I have organised several public events around this project in the Fusteria and the UB.